Ivo Pierozzi

Knowledge management and communication in Brazilian agricultural research: An integrated procedural approach

The great contemporary organizational challenge for enterprises is to create a conceptual and methodological framework allows the management of knowledge by means of networks designed for social interaction. This statement is based on the premise that the competitive drive and sustainable success of the company depend on the introduction of new forms of production innovative processes, which can only be ensured through integrated approaches to knowledge management and the incorporation information technologies (IT). This is a reality that has already been accepted by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa, its acronym in Portuguese), a Brazilian research, development, and innovation (RD&I) institution supporting agricultural sector. For some years now, Embrapa has been incorporating what it has learned about knowledge management into its strategic planning process. In this paper, we present a new approach to managing knowledge and information, and we analyze the need for research institutions to administer the knowledge they produce through an RD&I management model based multi- and inter-disciplinary teams, and multi-institutional research networks.

Collaborative Environments in RD&I Institutions of the Brazilian Agricultural Sector

Research, development and technological innovation (RD&I) companies promote inter- and intra-organizational interactions based on the formation of research nets. This arrangement prioritizes the use of competencies of both people and institutions, stimulating the generation of new knowledge and competencies, and consequently technological innovation. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation – Embrapa, responsible for knowledge generation and technological innovation in the Brazilian agricultural sector, has put a lot of effort into the establishment of a collaborative environment which allows the exchange of information, knowledge and experience among researchers and promote new knowledge, competencies and technological innovation. The present paper discusses conceptual bases and presents a model of collaborative environment established by the above-mentioned corporation in order to favor the learning and the production of innovative solutions in agricultural research nets.

Modeling the Impacts of Agriculture on Water Resources: Semantic Interoperability Issues

The advance of web collaborative systems brought new possibilities for the research of complex interdisciplinary topics by means of scientific multidisciplinary networks. Potentially, computational systems can support the management of multifaceted and large scale data sources, providing valuable and indispensable information for the researches. However, these solutions rely on semantic interoperability problems as well as the construction of complex knowledge representation models. This paper describes interoperability issues on the engineering process of the OntoAgroHidro, an ontology to represent knowledge about impacts of agricultural activities on water resources, as well as the impacts from possible climatic changes. The paper also presents representative scenarios and questions, and discusses the reuse and integration of concepts using knowledge visualization techniques.